The message of these figures is that in terms purely of economic cost it would make sense to mount a global vaccina- tion program against smallpox, even if the disease could never be eliminated. The hope of eradicating smallpox altogether rests on the fact that there seems to be no animal reservoir from which the human population can be reinfected, nor do the viruses remaining in healed pocks seem to last very long. Peter Razzell, a London University sociologist who has studied the history of smallpox vaccination (and has cast doubt on the interpretation of some of Jenner’s experiments) believes that ‘conli- dence in eradication of the disease could be premature’. In a recent article in Ne,r